


And The Child Grows Up Fast

by easternCriminal



Category: Paranatural (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, Spender has to grow up, drabbley kinda, head canon, head canons, thoughtful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 13:19:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8057950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easternCriminal/pseuds/easternCriminal
Summary: My headcanon on Spender's childhood, and growing up





	And The Child Grows Up Fast

**Author's Note:**

> Just thinking a lot about Spender and Mina and how they obviously used to be close friends and Spender's first tool and such. This came out.

Although the official Paranatural Activity club wasn’t actually instituted until years later, Spender and Mina were, more or less, the first members. As kids they would run around together, lighthearted and young and protecting lesser spirits from grudges and such. Mina with Patchworm, and Spender with his Bug Net - an object he had found one day and used often until one day it opened up a new world to him.

Much later, more into the future than Rick at his young age would ever even think about, he would describe his relationship with his first tool as one not unlike Isabel and Eightfold. 

So two kids play in a vibrant world together. There are no secrets between them, why would there ever need to be? Spender’s reckless and excitable as he chases after butterfly spirits with his tool, and when he falls down a hill and cuts his arm, Patchworm walks Mina through how to fix him up. Together they feel unstoppable. 

Until one day Spender is in the wrong place at the wrong time without his friends who can make every hurt go away, and a spirit takes the opportunity. It seeps into his bones and into his mind, a force that he is helpless to control. In desperation he reaches into his mind with his tool, and there he witnesses the darkness destroy his beloved friend and finds himself alone with his own inner demon. His mind, which had once reflected large rolling fields of grass and trees is now dark liquid black that drowns him. 

The darkness seeps out of him, into the real world. He is powerless. He is a child. A shady group of Spectrals take him, and in his panic state he might as well not be conscious, and throw him into the lake, hoping that if the boy dies the terrible spirit making him it’s home will die as well. Another spirit comes and takes him and beats back the darkness. Lucifer takes the boy to another, older spectral, and willingly kills himself in order to posses a pair of sunglasses - something the boy can keep with and on him at all times.

Spender talks less after that. He doesn’t go and play around Mayview with Mina anymore. He has to learn how he can help Lucifer control the darkness that has made him its’ home. He trains. He learn. He reads countless books. Lucifer teaches him about the ‘Greater Good’ and tries to drill his own values into the young boy. The young boy that is forced to grow up fast, because he can no longer stay a mere child.

He stops crying. Every now and then, he thinks of his old tool, but then he buries himself in his work again. Stop the pain by not feeling it. He gets to hold a baby Isabel Guerra in his arms and while he’s not sure he believes in the Greater Good Lucifer talks about, he realizes his own reason for fighting and studying and trying to solve the puzzle of Mayview.

He makes the Paranatural Activity club for Isabel and her friends. He listens to the four kids squabble. To the four children tease each other and smile and laugh and realizes that he would die for them before he would ever allow them to have to grow up any faster than they have to. That he would do anything to let them have their childhood.

Lucifer - never as kind worded as his first tool - strongly disagrees.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!! Please tell me what you think and/or your own headcanon's on Rick's childhood, his first tool, and anything else!


End file.
